Mors Factus Sum
by A.P. Samuels
Summary: Set several Decades in the future, a new "family" of vampires becomes entangled with the Cullens, but for all their apparent happiness, why do they cling to the words Mors Factus Sum...I am Become Death
1. Chapter 1

Mors Factus Sum

The year was 2035 and as I stood and watched as the last of the opening main stage acts walked off I felt both a tingle of awe and a pang of regret. The announcer came on stage and mic in hand announced, "Bastards and Whores, are you prepared to embrace the Prince of Darkness?!". The audience screamed louder as the first eerie chords of _Mister Crowley_ filled the arena. Ozzy has been dead for over a decade but with all of the advances in animatronics and three dimensional projection it was almost the same as it had been all those many years when I went to my very first Ozzfest. So many years have passed since then. Truthfully I expect that if any of these…children…new my true age I'd be laughed at and ostracized. Imagine a 53 year old man partying with the youngsters, even if I look barely half my true age. Ah well…the benefits of immortality. At least I can say "I saw The Prince _before _he was a corpse." I chuckled softly at the biggest joke of all. Prince of Darkness…I think not. I sighed and once again found that it was all too easy to get lost in the past and overlook the present. With that thought in mind I looked to my right at the young girl standing with me as she had all day into tonight. So beautiful and warm, so young, so naïve...so human. "Charlotte my dear, would you care for a beer or four?" I asked her and she looked at me with a smile and a most emphatic nod.

Several hours later, after listening to what must have been every song ever recorded by Ozzie and Sabbath and after buying my companion all of the overpriced drinks she desired, we slowly walked back to my car. Slowly because, for all her apparent grace when sober, this young woman appeared to be a very sloppy drunk. As we got closer to my car we passed through areas of near total darkness as some lazy attendant had forgotten or simply been too lazy to replace the overhead bulbs. As we walked I caught the faint scent of something…familiar.

"May I ask where you're taking that young lady?" The voice surprised me both in its unexpected appearance and in the barely restrained ferocity in the tone. I turned to face a young man of perhaps 17 years in appearance, however his complexion and scent told me that for all his apparent youth he could be seventeen or seventeen hundred. I looked at the monster in human guise standing before me for a moment, the tingling in my brain telling me that there was about to be a fight, before replying, "I wasn't aware that it was polite to invite yourself to another man's meal OR, for that matter is it any business of yours to enquire too deeply about the acquisition of such."

The bronze haired youth looked at me and growled, "Perhaps I'm making it my business and that young woman will be coming with us."

I whirled around and saw another vampire, a young woman, pickup Charlotte and prepare to take off with her. Outnumbered as I was I took the chance and lunged for the young woman. It was at this point that four things occurred, two expected and two unexpected. The first expected things was when my perceptions suddenly changed as my vampiric "talent" kicked into gear and through my eyes I could see both directly in front of me and a bird's eye view at my technopathic abilities linked me into the nearest satellite overhead. This of course lead to the second expected reaction which was the young man leaping at me from behind. The two unexpected events happened nearly simultaneously as I slammed face first into a vampire that, were he human, would have been described as a walking wall of meat who proceeded to put me into a crushing bear hug and a small elfin vampire ran headlong into the youth in midflight screaming "NO, Edward! It's not what you think! You need to stop this NOW!"

After several minutes of untangling myself from the meat wall, who's name I found out was Emmett, and having been introduced to the elfin Alice who had saved my life, along with Edward and Bella, who were apparently attempting to save Charlotte from the "Evil vampire scum" things relaxed a bit. Charlotte, having apparently burned off her buzz from the terror of her near abduction was still tired enough to be half out of it as the real discussion began.

"You need to meet our father." Said Bella to me as we stood in a rough circle in the parking lot of the arena, "Carlisle will most definitely want to meet another vampire who has chosen the vegan diet…plus…maybe I could talk to Charlotte. I've only been a vampire for a short time, relatively speaking, and I still remember what it was like being a human in love with a vampire."

Charlotte's eyes popped open in shock as I fell to the ground with laughter. I was laughing so hard that I never heard charlotte pop the trunk of my car and pull out the heavily dented aluminum baseball bat from within. It was the others' turn for shock as she proceeded to smack me over and over again with the bat putting more dents in its already pitted surface "I KNEW this would happen! I TOLD you it looked like we were together you ass! STOP LAUGHING AT ME! You are the WORST father in the WORLD!"

End Chapter 1


	2. Chapter 2

"Damnit...this server is completely borked.". I sat there, in what had to be the most uncomfortable stool ever designed by man, staring into a smoking ruin that had been, up until 6 hours ago, the hard drive array of a main control server. "Saturday, February 10, 2013...Happy effing birthday to me." My junior tech Tony had left sometime after 8pm and for the last 3 or so hours I had been here on my own. Client visits are probably the one thing that gets me out of sorts. A client visit on a Saturday...on my birthday...to repair a server that I had told them time and again was going to go up in smoke. Needless to say I was not in the best frame of mind. I had made my 3 important phone calls hours ago. To my wife and kids, to tell them I was most assuredly not going to make it home for cake, to my mother, to tell her to stop waiting for me to call her when I left (she worries), and to Tony to tell him to get his worthless rear back out to this site with a spare array to try and get this thing working.

Hearing the door open I expected to look up and see Tony with an armload of drives, but what I saw still haunts me to this day. Standing across the office at the front entrance was a cloaked figure. Fear makes you see funny things but I tell you this guy was huge.

"OK boss, I'm not sure what you want here but the office is closed so take a hike." Honestly I don't know if he even saw me until I spoke, but when he looked over at me I could see his deep black eyes.

"Yo, slick. I said the office is closed now get out before I call the cops".

That's when he...well I would say he jumped at me but it was more like he flew across the room. All I could feel was his iron grip holding me down and I could feel him tearing into my neck. I'm not really sure how but that was the point when the ancient battery backup decided to blow and catch fire. I watched the tall stranger run away. I made it to the car with my shirt wrapped around my neck and tried to drive to the hospital all the time with an indescribable pain coursing through me. I sort of remember beginning to black out and I definitely remember the car rolling off an embankment and catching fire. I must have crawled away in a panic, but the only thing I remember after that is pain...oh yes, I remember that pain well.


	3. Chapter 3

"And that's how I became...well...me."

I sat on what must have been a very high dollar couch amidst an incredible array of antiques and high end furnishings. I felt so drained, telling that story always takes the life out of me (no pun intended).

I must have appeared morose or something because the next voice I heard was Charlotte.

"Dad always gets...moody when he tells that story. I suppose you want to hear the rest of the tale so I can give you the salient points."

While I had already broken out of my funk I gave no outward signs of changing my mood. Kicking in my gift I connected to all of the household electronics: Cell phones, computers, servers...If I was going to let them near my family I wanted...I needed to know everything I could about them.

"I was just a baby when all this went down, mind you, and Mikey wasn't much older. The basic story goes something like this. I'm guessing that with the car going up in flames and dad bleeding all over everything that they figured he was pretty much toast. I think it was about a year later that braniac here decides to show up and let mom in on the whole story, good thing he's pretty indestructible now because I do recall a broken rolling pin and one of the frying pans has some odd dents in it, but other than that I think she must have taken it pretty well." I wanted to laugh at that memory but I decided to stay stoic and continue my research. What felt like hours passed as I sifted through the databases in the house, stripped of all their security in miliseconds and laid bare as an open book. Maybe these are others like us that can be trusted. I tuned my attention back to Charlotte and the Cullens, my hours of research having only consumed less than 5 minutes of real time.

"...so then mom decided that she wanted the sexy vamp makeover and most of the rest is history...well except for Me and Mikey that is. Once we were old enough to really understand what was going on we were let in on the family secrets and given...options." Family secrets...that's what we call them. We became immortal killing machines. The antithesis of all life. Beautiful, powerful, indestructible...we were the ultimate cheat in this game. Mors Factus sum, I am become Death. Oppenheimer had nothing on us...on what we were.

"I suppose it's only fair to tell you that Nan and Pop knew about everything too, but for whatever reason they wanted to finish out their time and go in peace. Anyway the choice we had was simple, once you hit 18 you can chose to become...well, like them."

I could feel tension building in the room but it all seemed to be coming from one direction. Edward was agitated, he probably had some hangup about being a vampire, but he seemed to be the only actively hostile one of the bunch. By contrast Bella seemed to be torn between wanting to calm Edward and wanting to give Charlotte a hug and the rest showed emotions ranging from polite interest to downright glee. I decided to step in at that point and finish myself. "Don't think that we take this lightly. We want our children to make their own choices in life knowing full well what it means to become like this." Wrong words wrong time I guess, because the next thing I knew I was at the center of angst fest Edward and his verbal tirade.

"KNOWING what you are, what you can do, you STILL would chose to bring your family into this abomination of existence? How could you even THINK..."

I had had enough "Listen up BOY. I don't give a rat's ass what you think. You try to lecture me like you know ANYTHING about life and you better think again. Some of us didn't get the luxury of dying in an epidemic before we had any responsibility or real life experience."

"Forgive me for interrupting, but how do you know that?" Carlisle asked the question with a calm demeanor but I could feel the question in the air around me.

"It's quite simple. It's my talent." As I said this I reached out and caused all of their cell phones to ring out with _Mr. Crowley_. " If it's networked, I can connect to it and make it dance. No offense Carlisle but your network security is a bit lacking."


	4. Chapter 4

Edward decided to go take a powder or something and for the next few minutes everything seemed to be going smoothly. A split second before Charlotte's phone rang I got that overwhelming sense of dread that can only mean one thing. I heard her answer the phone and my fears were confirmed. "Hi, Mom. No, we're ok. Yeah. Ummm...well, we met some people and went home with them after the show. Ummm. Ok. Yeah I'll tell him. Funny you should mention that. NO! It's allright. I'll explain when we get home. Love you too. Bye." Charlotte turned to me and gave me a look. "Mom says that unless you died trying to save me from a vampire attack she's going to kill you when you get home."

Emmett's laughter could probably be heard in the next city over . Looking slightly abashed I faced my hosts "I need a beer, a cigarette, and a dark hole to hide in. Barring that I'm going to leave now and face what's coming to me." If anything Emmett seemed to laugh harder "Bro, there's nothing in the world like a strong willed woman." I had to smile at that and my grin got wider as Rosalie smacked him in the back of the head.

"Well Carlisle, I need to hit the bricks if I don't want to get in more trouble that I'm in now" He stood and we shook hands as he escorted me to the door.

Once we were safely on the interstate, I looked to Charlotte. "Ok honey, I know you're dead tired but what do you think?"

Charlotte sat and thought for a few minutes before answering. "They're nice I guess. That Edward is a complete angst factory but other than that I think they're cool. Maybe." She sighed and looked forward. "At least it would be nice to have some friends...you know...after..."

"Charlotte...Nobody is forcing you. You don't have to do this. Your mother and I..."

"Stop it Dad!" she yelled at me,"Just what am I supposed to do? Wait around until you and Mom look younger than me? Wait until you look more like my brother than my father? Should I wait until we go to some town and I tell people that I'm YOUR mother? Tell everybody that Mikey is MY son, just so we can stay hidden? Should I wait until I'm so old that I can pass as your grandmother? Can you honestly say to me that it would be better for you to watch me die as an old woman when I can live as your daughter? It's not going to happen. We're doing this in four days on my birthday. Tradition, remember? It's MY turn to join the REAL family just like I should have done 3 years ago when I turned 18. I let you and Mom and Michael talk me out of what I should have known from the beginning was my inevitable end. Mors Factus Sum, father. It is time for me to become Death as well."


	5. Chapter 5

I can't argue too hard with Charlotte. If you don't have kids of your own you can't understand, but just take it as a given that Charlotte was not going to get anymore fight from me tonight. I quickly turned part of my attention elsewhere. "Hmmmm. Well they're not stupid that's for sure. Looks like they turned off all of their cell phones and pulled the batteries so no dice there." I saw Charlotte shake her head and then curl up in the passenger seat to fall asleep. I still needed more information so I pulled into a rest stop and into a secluded spot.

Technopathic abilities aren't something that you just wake up knowing how to use. It took me over a decade to do more than just use a single terminal from across the room, but after 22 years of experience I can work it to the hilt. If you imagine that information is a vehicle and paths between systems are roads then you can sort of get an idea of how I do what I do. If you look at an atlas of the US for example, there are no roads without a connection, every path leads to another path...you just need to know how to get from point A to point B. I connected to the GPS system in my car and accessed one of the satellites overhead. Using that as a bounce point I passed through several gateways until I reached the net and from there it was a simple exercise to locate the Cullens connection and sneak in through the port I had left open. I quickly found several desktop and laptop computers with built in webcam mics and all I had to do at that point was find the one closest to the action. I could hear Carlisle talking to his family quite clearly so it must be his personal laptop I was connected to. "...ersonal feelings are Edward, I would like to know what your read on our guests this evening is."

I can tell you already that Charlotte's term for Edward...Angst Factory...was accurate enough that it could actually be his name. "That's just it Carlisle...I couldn't read them. Actually I should say that I could read her...what she was thinking at any given time, but her mind doesn't wander. She's very focused and it's almost as if her mind shuts down unless she's speaking. As for her father, and this is only a guess mind you, but I think that his talent has altered the way his mind works."

"How So?" Carlisle inquired.

Edward paused "Do you remember that awful movie that Emmett made us sit through years ago_ The Matrix _? It's like the screens from that film. All data and nothing to latch onto. I can look at his mind but I have no way to interpret his thought patterns in any meaningful way."

Carlisle spoke again "Alice?"

"There are really too many possibilities for me to give you a solid answer. If I had to narrow it down there are four possibilities that seem most likely at this point. The first two involve us befriending them and all of us becoming very close. The only major difference between them is that I see Charlotte as both a vampire and as a human. The third future Charlotte is definitely a vampire but their family feels more like acquaintances than like true friends and allies. The final future is very bad...I still see Charlotte as a vampire but I see us fighting against them. I don't like to read that path too deeply, because it is very sad on both ends, but I can see that the trigger point for all of the diversion is Edward. If you continue to antagonize the father you will alienate the entire family. It's just a matter of how far you push him."

"I honestly do understand that, and you should as well Edward." The elegant Esme was speaking now "You know what it means to be a true parent...to have a child of your body. Charlotte is not someone who was picked up or adopted, she is his own flesh and blood, as is his son. His wife in death was also his wife in life and their bond must be even stronger now than was prior to their change. Please Edward, if what Alice says is true, you must always remember that this new family is tied together with a bond much more like the one between you and Bella than the one between the rest of us. It's not that it's stronger, or any more or less valid, but it is different."

"That's a good point Esme."Said Carlisle "And it is most assuredly something we need to keep in mind in our future interactions with them. Rose? Emmett?"

I actually liked Emmett. I could see him as someone I would have gone to the bar with and tossed back a few pitchers while watching the game.

"Rose and I have been talking about it a bit and we're basically in agreement. I like him. If we were both human I could see us watching the 'Skins and tossing back a few." I knew I liked this kid, I just wish he liked a better team. Philly/Washington games were going to be a big deal if we started interacting socially. "Charlotte is the sticky point for Rose. You know how she feels about becoming one of us. Especially a young girl like that. It's gotten a lot better since Bella ans Ness but it's still there. As for the rest...well he doesn't back down from a fight which could prove useful if we get into it again with the Italians. If Alice hadn't stepped in when she did there was going to be a dust up in that parking lot tonight. Both Rose and I want to meet the other two before we give a whole hearted go/no-go but if the rest are like him then I say we keep them as close as we can."

Carlisle took the floor again. "Jasper, your up next." I hadn't heard much from the last member of the cullens. He had kept a lot of distance between himself and Charlotte. Without appearing to do so he had positioned himself so that there were always at least 2 of the other Cullens between them.

"They're both very...I think controlled is the best way to put it. The only time he hit any type of emotional spike was when he was yelling at Edward and when Charlotte's mother called. Even then it was more of a blip on the radar than anything else. Charlotte was nearly flat-lined the whole time. I don't know if it was because she was still a bit intoxicated or because she was exhausted but there was no fear in her at all."

Once again Carlisle took control. "She may have no fear of vampires if, as she said, her father has been one for the majority of her life. I don't think we're going to settle this matter in one night of discussion and I hear Jake's motorcycle so he and Renesme must be dropping by for a visit. I would like for us to keep an open mind here but at the same time we need to be cautious. Only time will tell."

I disconnected from the system while leaving by back door open. This could be a good thing or it could be a very bad thing. As I pulled back out onto the interstate I thught about Carlisle's last words and how true they were. Only time will tell.


	6. Chapter 6

I pulled into the driveway of our house. While modest by the Cullen's standards it still feels perfect to me. I still remember the day we bought this place. We were both human at that point, married less than a year with our first child on the way. I've heard that human memories are supposed to fade over time but maybe there is a way to sacrifice some memories to keep the ones you really want. I can't tell you who my best friend in high school was anymore but I can still remember the look on my father's face the day Michael was born. All things in moderation I suppose. I sent out a thought and tripped the garage door opener so that I could pull inside. Charlotte was out cold next to me so I decided to grab a blanket from inside and carry her to her room. Contrary to what my wife may say I'm not always a jerk. Any thought of a peaceful evening went right out of my head as something very heavy hit me in the chest with incredible speed. As I lay on the floor my charming, beautiful wife stood over me holding the anniversary gift she had bought herself last year. At three and a half feet in length and made from a solid rod of ultra strength steel this was the most exquisite and heavy baseball bat ever turned.

"Where is our daughter?" Simple wording, standard question...I might make it out of here tonight with only the one hit.

"She's in the car, asleep. I was coming in for a blanket to carry her to her room."

"She is not and she can walk to her room herself." Apparently the sound of a vampire getting hit with a steel bar moving at just under mach 1 is enough to wake a person up. "Hi, mom. You want me to tell you about our visit now or do you plan on beating the story out of dad?"

"Baby I can tell you're spent. Go get some sleep and you can fill in anything he misses later" Sexy, deadly, and still maternal. Go figure. "Mikey is out for the evening so you can tell him everything tomorrow. Love you kiddo."

"Night mom."

As Charlotte disappeared upstairs my wife's lovely smile took a decidedly unlovely turn as she glared at me. "Spill it. NOW! Every effing detail and if I find out there is so much as a callus on that girl you're going to have to buy me a new bat after you finish removing this one from your ass."

I love her...really I do...but sometimes I question my own sanity in turning her. Threats of violence completed we sat in the living room and I told her all about the Cullens.

"...so after that I left the rest stop and came home."

"She could have been hurt or killed you know. Both of you could have. Aethan, if either of you had gone missing, I don't know what I would do. I went through that loss once already and I don't want to go through that ever again."

"A calculated risk, love."

"Calculated how exactly? Because you don't really have the best track record of brilliant decision making skills."

"Jenna...as stupid as you may think I am sometimes, or as reckless as I might behave when it's just the two of us I do have a healthy respect for the mortality of our daughter. Look at the facts. They tried to protect her from ME. They KNEW she was human and they stepped in because they thought I was some sort of monster out to take her life. Do you think that those are the kind of people that would lure us in just to off us? Think about it. Even outnumbered as I was, the tactical decision would be to take out the threat – me - and then abscond with the girl. That didn't happen. They tried to shield her from harm and only AFTER they found out the truth did they relent and let her near me."

"When did you become so trusting Aethan?"

"I didn't, and I never said I trusted them. But I'll tell you I was a damn sight closer to it then I have EVER been with any of those wanderers that have come around. And if these Cullens turn out to be like those others...bad things happen to bad people Jenna."

"Only time will tell Aethan, only time will tell."


End file.
